Burke, Hamilton, and Churchill on politics and first principles

Here, selected by Spencer Warren, are the thoughts of three outstanding Western political figures on the indispensable need for first principles in politics, both in order to understand the problems of political society and to be an effective political leader. It is useful to contrast the serious approach to truth shown by these three men with the spectacularly shallow opinion mongering—unhinged from principle, contemptuous of logic, devoid of consistency, ignorant of history, and frivolous in the extreme—displayed by the professional supporters of President Bush’s spread-democracy doctrine.

I was not less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine.
Burke, Speech on Moving His Resolution for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775

… the best way of determining disputes, and of investigating truth is by ascending to elementary principles.”
Alexander Hamilton, Papers of Alexander Hamilton, I, 96

Those who are possessed of a definite body of doctrine and of deeply rooted convictions … will be in a much better position to deal with the shifts and surprises of daily affairs than those who are merely taking short views, and indulging their natural impulses as they are evoked by what they read from day to day.
Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 210.

True wisdom is to cultivate a sense of proportion which may help one to pick out the three or four things that govern all the rest and as it were write one’s own headlines and not change them very often.”
Churchill, from a speech in 1953, Complete Speeches, 8:8507

In 1897, at the age of twenty-two, in a letter to his mother written while serving with the Army in India, [Churchill] explained his efforts to “build up a scaffolding of logical and consistent views,” which was to be constructed of facts and “muscles,” or principles.
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume I, 334.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 05, 2006 03:46 PM | Send